Pearl Harbor galvanized the country and sent it headlong into World War II, this we know. Just how everything changed – and so drastically – after that day is ripe for illustration, and Alfred Palmer did a good job of that with his photograph above, shot outside a large hangar at a Goodyear facility in Akron, Ohio, in December 1941. We have to assume the photograph was taken after Pearl Harbor, given his “the present emergency” wording in his caption to the image:

Formerly an aircraft dock, this huge building — thought to be the largest in the world with no interior supports — is now the scene of many busy shops turning out aircraft sub-assembly parts, Goodyear Aircraft Corp., Akron, Ohio. Either new housing close to the plant or vastly improved public transportation will eventually have to be supplied, for the tires on the cars of the workers, and perhaps even the cars themselves, will in many instances give in before the end of the present emergency.

As with Russell Lee’s photograph of Cascade, Idaho, we chose to reproduce this photograph this morning to see if we can help along the historical record just a bit by identifying the cars pictured here. If you’d like a little head-start, the comments on this image on Flickr include identifications on a few of the cars, but not all of them. See how many you can attach years, makes and models to.

Steve is correct on the Lakehurst, NJ Naval Air Station having one. This is at the same field famous for the Hindenburg crash though the hanger was not involved.

These were originally for the US dirigible fleet and later used for blimps. And these are so huge that at one air show at the base, an Radio Control model plane group was allowed to fly their airplanes around in the hanger…

Actually, that is the Goodyear Airdock, built in 1929 by the Goodyear-Zeppelin Company as a factory for airships. The Moffet Field hangars (and similar ones in Weeksville, NC) were built shortly after to house the U.S. Airships Akron and Macon. THe hangar at Lakehurst, which I’ve visited, was built earlier, in 1921 and is of a different design. All are pretty amazing.

Meanwhile, back to the photo. The car on the left looks like a ’42 Chevy, while the maroon car at center is a ’40 Chevy, with a grey ’39 Plymouth to the right. Can’t tell most of the rear views at first glance,

Believe it or not, the USS Akron was designed to be an aircraft carrier. Returning pilots sought to snag their biplanes on a cross-bar known as a “flying trapeze”. As described in CR4’s “On This Day in Engineering History” Blog, this device was first tested successfully on May 3, 1932.

Sadly, the Akron’s successes were short-lived. Shortly after midnight on April 4, 1933, the airship was buffeted by ferocious winds off the coast of new Jersey. She sank tail first into the Atlantic, claiming the lives of 73 men.

I am familiar with the Macon, very similar to the Akron, and it had the trapeze and carried, I believe, three or four planes. They have found the wreckage, and there was talk before about seeing whether one of the airplanes could be brought back to the surface. It crashed off the California coast.

What most people don’t realize is that these two airships were only slightly shorter than the Hindenburg. They were absolutely gigantic. Remember that these airships were only 200 feet shorter than the Queen Mary. As such, they were equivalent to an ocean liner flying over your head.

The Navy’s rigid airship program is a favorite research area of mine. There were four of them: Shenendoah (mid-20s), Los Angeles (early 30s), Akron, and Macon. Akron and Macon got their names from cities in the districts of Congressmen who were favorable to the project. The beautiful Shenendoah, the proof of concept vehicle as it were, was destroyed by a thunderstorm over Iowa in about 1925 with large loss of life (she had a crew of about sixty men; Akron and Macon were larger.) As mentioned above, Akron was lost in a storm in the Atlantic; only three of the crew survived. One of the deaths was Rear Admiral Moffett, the biggest proponent of Navy airships. Macon lasted a few years longer but a freak wind off the California coast damaged her upper hull and tail surface just enough to lose airworthiness. Fortunately the lessons learned from the Akron tragedy had led to improved lifeboat and crash survival techniques and few if any lives were lost. Los Angeles survived long enough to be mothballed and then cut up for scrap during WWII.

The idea was to improve the meager range and aloft time of the era’s scout planes and also to “stealthily” observe enemy ships from outside gun range. By the standards of 1930 they were pretty successful; of course by the late 30s/WWII they would have been completely vulnerable to air attack and radar detection. Operational trials with the fleet were successful but the biggest Achilles heel of the giant rigid airships was their total lack of survivability in heavy weather. Modern proponents of large airships as heavy-lift or passenger craft are pretty much dependent on state-of-the-art weather radar.

In looking back over the history of the Macon, there’s a story I forgot. In 1934, the Macon searched for, and found, the heavy cruiser USS Houston returning from Hawaii with President Roosevelt aboard. They (probably the scout planes) dropped newspapers for the president, who sent back a message of thanks and commendation. The commander of the Pacific fleet was not happy because it made the president’s security look weak but the commander of the aviation division, Admiral Ernest King, (later chief of staff of the Navy in WWII) was very pleased and the Macon’s commander was promoted soon afterward.

You guys are probably totally sick of my airship blather. Sorry, they were awesome and they are largely forgotten today. Akron and Macon were built in a joint venture by Goodyear and Zeppelin, primarily by German airship engineers working at the Goodyear Airdock. Interestingly enough, they each used eight (!) Maybach engines.